


Cold Fire

by Annessarose



Series: Unsung Ballads of the Siege of Mandalore [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Divergence - Battle of Mustafar, Gen, Heavy Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:14:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26871229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Annessarose/pseuds/Annessarose
Summary: Following Order 66, instead of landing on an abandoned moon, Ahsoka finds herself on Mustafar.(She didn’t know Senator Amidala could look so frail.She didn’t know Artoo could sound so sullen.She didn’t know Obi-Wan could feel so broken.She didn’t know Anakin could scream like that.)
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker & Ahsoka Tano, CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano, Darth Maul & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Ahsoka Tano, Obi-Wan Kenobi & Anakin Skywalker
Series: Unsung Ballads of the Siege of Mandalore [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1743427
Comments: 26
Kudos: 159





	Cold Fire

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this post and art](https://revenge-of-the-shit.tumblr.com/post/626212485013356544/theres-so-much-darkness-swirling-around-this) that I did a while ago but never really finished until now. 
> 
> I'm working on my other fic, I promise, but this has been on the shelf for a while. 
> 
> Unbeta'd.

**I.**

When he’s in the prison, he dreams. 

The Mandalorian-made _thing_ is made of a strange material, cutting him off from the Force outside of the prison. He cannot influence the world around him - he cannot close his fist and kill the clones surrounding him, he cannot mind-trick the guards. He can do nothing but stand, immobilized, and dream.

He dreams first of Mother, of how she had given her life so that he would escape. He dreams then of Savage, and how he had also died by the hands of Sidious.

_Sidious._

Hatred swells in Maul, and had he not been imprisoned, the walls would have shaken with his anger. Regardless, he is trapped, and the guards notice nothing. 

And he dreams, and he dreams, and he dreams. 

One word - one planet - rises to his thoughts. 

_Mustafar._

_\--_

**II.**

She runs into his cell after incapacitating the clones, guilt warring with confusion and betrayal. She’s reminded of the time she was attacked by clones under the control of the Geonosian brain worm, trapped on a ship with friendlies turned into hostiles with nowhere to go for safety.

How ironic, to be forced to turn to a _Sith Lord_ of all people for help.

“Don’t make me regret this,” she hisses at him, and she allows the edge of her saber to move close enough for him to feel the heat on the skin of his neck. He doesn’t shudder, but a sliver of respect makes its way into the Force, and she takes it as a sign. She releases him.

He falls to the ground, limbs sore after being forced to stay upright in one position for hours on end. “You-” he coughs, and tries again. “You survived.”

“Was this your doing?” She demands, and she holds the saber to his neck. The Force around him is swirling with awe but not triumph, an indication that the betrayal of the clones is not his doing, but she needs to be sure. “Choose your words carefully.”

“No,” he snarls, “no, it was _not_ my doing. I do not know what has occurred, but surely - you have felt it. The voices crying out, the death.”

She has. She still feels it. It is like a never-ending wave of pain, battering into her consciousness relentlessly. She steps back, and in a moment of weakness, she does what she never thought she’d do - she bares her doubts and her vulnerability to a Sith Lord. “The clones turned against me.” Her voice catches, and she grasps her emotions with a vigor, shoving them into the Force. ”Even Rex. I don’t know why - they just suddenly… weren’t themselves.”

Maul’s brows draw together for a second, and then he’s laughing, a low, dark chuckle that makes Ahsoka’s skin crawl. “Brilliant, brilliant!” He says with mirth, but there’s something else in his voice. Respect, and fear. “I was not privy to my master’s plan, but now I see it. He turned the Jedi’s own army against them.”

It takes everything she has not to scream in horror, and even then, she’s sure that it’s showing on her face. 

Maul looks at her carefully, then, golden eyes boring into her blue, and he seems to contemplate something before speaking. “The Sith are on Mustafar.”

Her eyes narrow. “Why should I believe you?”

There’s something he’s not telling her. He’s not lying, but he’s not telling the whole truth, either. 

“It came to me in a vision,” he tells her. “I swear on the soul of my deceased brother, Savage Opress, that what I am telling you is the truth.”

It rings true in the Force, but even then, she’s suspicious. “And what about the Sith Master? Sidious?”

She’d felt his reaction before, on Mandalore. At the very mention of Sidious’ name, Maul had shuddered, and fear too deep to be faked had lept from his presence. The same reaction appears before her now before being replaced by a visceral hatred, and he snarls. “He tore me from my mother’s arms.” His voice low, shaking with rage years in the making. “He used me and cast me aside, then killed my brother as I watched. I want nothing more than revenge.”

She watches Maul carefully, and finally acquiesces with a nod. 

“Then we have something in common,” she tells him, and they begin to plan. 

\--

**III.**

She manages to save Rex while Maul is working on an attack on the bridge. 

“You let him _out?_ ” Rex asks her, and she feels a twinge of guilt. 

There are no good choices in war. Only bad ones, and _really bad_ ones. 

“I did,” she tells him. Her voice carries no trace of the regret she may be feeling. “The Sith are on Mustafar. If we act quickly, we might be able to stop them before it really _is_ too late to do anything.”

Under his helmet, Rex grimaces, but he doesn’t say anything. 

\--

**IV.**

The entire ship is littered with bodies. 

Maul had found his lightsaber, and he uses it now, whirling through the bridge in a dangerous dance. 

Then it’s just him, alone, and he changes the hyperspace coordinates to Mustafar.

\-- 

**V.**

They manage to save a meager half dozen. Jesse isn’t among them. They find him in one of the hallways, the upper half of his body lying near a closed door, and Ahsoka can guess where the other half has gone.

The entire hallway is painted red with blood. Blaster marks scorch the walls, all of them aiming for a target that was too powerful to be felled by something as simple as a plasma bolt. Some parts of the walls had been torn off, used as a deadly razor that had cut through the air and decapitated many of them. 

Ahsoka can feel Rex’s eyes on her back. He doesn’t say anything, and neither does she. 

She never asks for forgiveness. He never offers it. He’s a soldier - he knows what it means to choose between a fatal choice and a horrible one. But she knows just as well that he will never unsee the image of Jesse’s body, cruelly mutilated and horribly still, and she knows that he will forever hear her words in his head ringing with the final image of Jesse.

_I let him out._

There are no good choices in war. 

\--

**VI.**

Maul isn’t happy when he sees the clones, but he lets them live. There’s a wariness around him that’s mixed with anger, and Ahsoka knows that he’s thinking of their last duel, and how she’d bested him with no weapons. 

“The journey will take many more hours,” he drawls. “I suggest you take the time to rest before we face Sidious.”

Unspoken is what will happen after they kill Sidious together. Neither of them speak about it. Neither of them even dare to think about it while they’re in the same room. Shielded as they are, they know the other Force-user is too powerful to risk ticking off at the moment. They need each other.

But only for now. 

\--

**VII.**

They spend half of the journey there gathering as many bodies as possible. It’s heavy work, both physically and mentally. Eight hours later, Ahsoka is spent, and though they’ve activated as many droids as they can to help, there’s just _too many kriffing bodies._ One of the hangars is cordoned off to serve as a temporary morgue, and though it’s already nearly full, Ahsoka knows that this only accounts for maybe half of the men on this ship.

She orders Rex and his remaining brothers to stop working and to sleep for the remainder of the eight hours. They’ll need as much rest as they can to take on Sidious. She knows they won’t actually be able to sleep for much of it, but they need all they can get. 

When she gets back to her quarters, her stomach lurches, and she barely makes it to the fresher before she’s heaving, throwing up her last meal and choking on her sobs. A deep, stabbing emptiness gnaws at her chest where there used to be her bonds with her masters and with the other Jedi she’d cared for. She thinks of Master Plo and how she hadn’t even said goodbye to him the last time she’d left the Temple. She thinks of Master Yoda and how he’d called her a Padawan with all the hope and compassion of a teacher. She thinks of her crèchemaster from many years past, of Cin Drallig, who’d taught her the lightsaber basics as an initiate, and she feels so kriffing deeply the yawning emptiness where their light should be in the Force. 

She heaves again. She can’t see. Her vision is too blurry and she’s aware that she’s howling loudly in her grief and that it’s entirely unbecoming of a Jedi. But she isn’t a Jedi, is she? And she never will be. Because there are no Jedi anymore. 

Rex comes to her quarters an hour later with red eyes and nothing to say. By then, she'd cleaned herself up, but she’d fallen to her knees on the ‘fresher floor and she hadn’t been able to get herself to stand. He takes her hand and gently guides her to her bunk, then, with her permission, he gets on the bunk too and awkwardly puts his arms around her, trying to give her a modicum of comfort. She sinks into his embrace without hesitation, curling into his chest, and they sit in silence for three hours before they fall into an uneasy sleep. 

\--

**VIII.**

Twenty minutes before they pull into real space, Ahsoka staggers on her feet at the sheer wave of pain that slams into her consciousness as they approach Mustafar. 

_Obi-Wan._

_He’s alive._

She’s on the bridge of the ship with Maul and the rest of the clones, and her sabers are in her hands before she can think, alight with a threatening azure that’s pointed towards Maul. “Liar,” she snarls. “You _said_ that Sidious would be here. But he isn’t. You wanted to kill Master Kenobi instead!”

Maul’s face darkens, his presence flickering with a barely repressed rage. “I did not _lie,_ ” he growls. “I know Sidious will be here. The presence of Kenobi is but a convenience. Now, put aside your emotions, and focus on the task at hand. It is not the Jedi way to be ruled by your anger, is it?”

“I know that betrayal is the way of the Sith,” she retorts. Behind her, Rex and his brothers ready their weapons. They’d found some spare vibroblades in the barracks - just enough for all of them to have one. 

They all know blasters are ineffective against a Sith Lord. 

Maul rolls his eyes, but in the Force, Ahsoka can sense his rage, bubbling and waiting to be released to the surface. “Stop your insolence,” he says dismissively. “Do you truly think you can take Sidious alone?”

No. She knows she can’t. She’d given her everything to battle Maul, and she’d nearly died. But her head is pounding with the images of the bodies of her men and her chest feels like there’s a gaping wound with the sheer loss she feels in the Force and her heart feels raw because she can’t feel Anakin through his bond at all which means that he’s _gone._ He’s dead. And she can’t lose Master Kenobi if she knows that he’s alive now. “I will _not_ let you kill Master Kenobi,” she seethes. 

Maul’s eyes narrow and his face twists in anger, his hand twitching towards his saberstaff at his belt. “Attachment is not the Jedi way, padawan,” he warns, the threat clear in his voice and in the Force. 

“I’m no Jedi,” she retorts, and she leaps forward. 

\--

**IX.**

By the end of it, she’s lost one of her sabers and there’s a large gash in her side. Out of the seven clones, only three of them survived. Rex is alive, thankfully, but he’s missing an arm, and the other two are not faring much better. But Maul is dead, his presence finally _gone,_ and Ahsoka barely makes it back to the medbay with the other three survivors before she collapses on the bed. 

The med droid patches her wounds, wrapping them with bacta and binding them tightly with bandages before giving her a strong painkiller. It isn’t particularly pleased that she insists on walking - more than that, it thinks she should be in a bacta tank _right now_ \- but she needs to go to Mustafar. She needs to get on the planet _now._ Obi-Wan’s presence has only darkened as time has gone on, filling with a pain so deep that she’s sure he’s being tortured, and she needs to save him. She needs to save _someone_. 

“Commander-” 

Rex’s voice cuts through her thoughts. It’s weak and feeble and too much unlike him, but she reaches out and squeezes his hand, trying and failing to suppress a wince at the pain that jolts through her at that movement. 

“I need to go,” she tells him. “There’s no _time._ ”

What she doesn’t tell him is that the Force is screaming at her to go. What she doesn’t tell him is that she knows she’ll come back alive. 

What she doesn’t tell him is that while she knows that she’ll come back alive, whatever she sees will haunt her. 

“May the Force be with you,” Rex manages, and she gives him a final squeeze before gingerly making her way to ship. 

\--

**X.**

There’s a horrid coldness coming from Mustafar. The entire place just feels _wrongwrongwrong_ , filled with a madness and grief so sharp it brings tears to her eyes. She follows the Force, following its whispers and its guidance, and her heart sinks when she sees a body on the landing platform next to the large Nubian vessel. 

_No._

She lands then bolts out of her seat, then stops, clutching at her side as she gasps in pain. More carefully this time, she opens the hatch, limping towards the prone form of Senator Amidala, visibly pregnant, and with a Force-presence that’s waning by the minute. 

_No, no, no._

“Senator!” she gasps, but there’s no indication that Padmé has heard her. “Senator, it’s me! It’s Ahsoka!” she tries again, but there’s no response. A noise has her whipping around and biting back a scream of pain at the sudden movement, but to her relief, it’s Threepio, his normally fussy voice terrified and filled with more anxiety than usual. 

“Oh, my! Mistress Tano, am I glad to see you!” he exclaims. “Do hurry, please! I just finished preparing an area for her to rest and I do not have the strength to carry her!” 

A small wave of relief washes over Ahsoka. At least Senator Amidala is not _completely_ alone, then. Biting her lip at the pain, Ahsoka reaches into the Force, levitating Padmé carefully into the ship. It takes much more effort than it usually should thanks to her injury, and by the end of it, she sinks to her knees, exhausted from the effort. 

“Thank you, Mistress Tano! And- Oh!” Threepio looks over her shoulder with a trace of relief lacing his voice. “Artoo! Thank goodness you’re here!”

Ahsoka turns her head just enough to see the little astromech making his way up the ramp of the cruiser. Her mind, made sluggish by the Darkness around this planet and her injury takes a moment to catch up, but when it does, her eyes widen and she realizes what this means. 

_Oh, Force. Anakin was here._

She still can’t sense anything but a cold emptiness from her bond with Anakin, but she can sense Obi-Wan, his pain a muted echo through her bond with him.

Had Master Kenobi been forced to watch Anakin die?

She feels sick. 

But she needs to ask. 

“Artoo,” she manages, her voice raspy, “was Anakin here?”

 _He was,_ Artoo beeps, and Ahsoka’s stomach drops. She’d _never_ heard him sound so morose before. _I last saw him when-_

She’s out of the ship before Artoo can even finish his sentence, stumbling towards where Obi-Wan’s presence is screaming. She runs, and she runs, and she runs - or limps - and she keeps going, heedless of the burning pain in her side, and she follows where the Force guides her.

There’s so much Darkness swirling around this sector of the planet. The roar of lava rushes around her, making it hard to hear anything at all, and the heat is near-unbearable, soaking her skin in sweat and making her cough from the thick ash that coats the air, irritating the wound in her side even further. But she ignores it. She stumbles through the rocks, her mind driven towards a single goal.

_Obi-Wan._

What she feels from him nearly makes her succumb to her tiredness and collapse. 

His Force-presence, once so strong and assured and calm, is in turmoil, fractured into a million tiny pieces that are only haphazardly held together through the sheer desire to survive, and even then, it’s frail. Beside Obi-Wan is a presence - a Dark one - filled with so much rage and hatred and disgust she nearly vomits there and then. But there’s something else. Something that she can tell that she’s missing that will come crashing down on her. 

Maybe that’s the Sith that had killed Anakin. Her one remaining saber flies into her hand, and she clutches it tightly in anticipation for battle. Part of her berates herself for coming here with no backup and with a severe injury, but she’d needed to come. There wasn’t any _time._

She stumbles over the rocks as she runs, the Force slippery between her fingers, made slick from the sickening Darkness that permeates this place, her mind latching onto Obi-Wan’s presence. He doesn’t seem to be able to sense her in his broken state. _Master,_ she thinks. _Master. Father. Friend._ Someone close to her, at least one person, who had survived the purge, she needs to save him, she needs to-

The rocks give way, and she sees him, his face twisted in so much anguish and pain she thinks he’s been stabbed. 

“Master!” She shouts, and he whips around, his hand on his lightsaber and a wild terror in his eyes. When he sees her, he stares, and she hooks her saber back to her belt and holds out her hands. “It’s me,” she says, and she tries to project calm in the Force through her bond with him. Oh, kriff. How bad must it be if he can’t even recognize her through the Force? “It’s Ahsoka.” 

He stares, and stares, and then his face and his presence twists into a pain so deep she leaps to his side because he could only be in such pain if the Sith had wounded him. She lands on the bank beside Obi-Wan, her lightsaber in hand, and-

_Oh, Force._

_Force._

_Gods of Shili._

Obi-Wan had been wounded by the Sith, she knows that now. 

What she didn’t know was that she would be wounded in this way, too. She’d expected a lightsaber to the heart. But this feels worse. 

She stares into the golden-red eyes of the man that used to be Anakin Skywalker.

He stares back at her, an unhinged rage rolling off of him in waves, and she reaches clumsily for their bond, trying to confirm that this isn’t him, surely this isn’t Anakin, this can’t be-

A wave of cold slams into her consciousness, and the monster wearing her Master’s body howls at her. “ _Traitor!”_ he snarls, and his voice is guttural and hate-filled and _wrong,_ she doesn’t recognize it at all, she doesn’t recognize the voice or the mutilated body that lies on the burnt banks of Mustafar before her. 

Her feet move before she can register them, taking one step back, then another, then another before she falls to the ground. Obi-Wan doesn’t catch her.

He can’t. 

If she had had the strength to reach out to him, she would have realized that her presence here had broken him, the straw that broke the bantha’s back. 

“What have you done?” she whispers, and she doesn’t know who she’s talking to. 

Then something horrible happens. 

The fabrics at the edge of the monster’s stumps catch fire, and he starts to burn.

She feels numb. 

She wants to help.

She wants to run.

She wants to-

_Oh, Sith hells._

She didn’t know he could scream like that. 

Obi-Wan is frozen behind her, unable to move, unable to look away, unable to do anything, and the burning form of the body that used to be Anakin reaches out. 

And her bond with Anakin crackles alight.

_Help me._

_Please._

She doesn’t realize that she’s moving until she suddenly finds herself already at the edge of the slope, hauling Anakin back up the hill as she ignores the burning in her side, the Force pulsing around her as she uses it to push away the flames. There’s no saving what’s left of his legs - it’ll be truly a miracle if he can walk the same way he used to again - but he’s alive. He’s alive. 

“Ahsoka,” Anakin croaks, his entire presence vibrating with rage and hatred and agony, but she doesn’t care, she can’t leave him, she can’t just _stand there_ , she has it in herself to at least try and help, so she does. 

“Master,” she murmurs back, and she turns to Obi-Wan. “Can you-”

She can’t finish the sentence. The moment she looks at his face, she knows that Anakin Skywalker is not the only person who died in spirit today. Obi-Wan looks and feels like but a shell of the man he used to be, shattered to pieces by betrayal and loss, and yet he still finds the strength to nod and step forward. 

And they head back together, the three of them, like it always was, but in a manner that never should have been. 


End file.
